The Venture Bros. is an animated series broadcast on Adult Swim chronicling the adventures of Dr. Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture, his sons Dean and Hank, and their bodyguard Brock Samson. Dr. Venture follows in the footsteps of his super-scientist father, Dr. Jonas Venture. The Venture family frequently clashes with villains like The Monarch and his assistant Dr. Girlfriend.

Contents

History

Writer and cartoonist Chris McCulloch came up with the idea for The Venture Bros. around 1998 as a comic book story, and soon wrote the first draft of the script while he worked as a storyboard artist on Sheep in the Big City. At the time, McCulloch was meeting with Comedy Central regarding a show pitch of his comic Uncle Nature, all the while playing around with the Venture Bros. concept in the background. The Comedy Central pitch fell through, and McCulloch's comic book story about the Ventures was becoming too extensive to work as a comic book anymore, so he began to turn it into an animated pilot script. McCulloch also pitched The Venture Bros. script to Comedy Central, who "politely" turned it down within the week.

After Sheep in the Big City and his failed Comedy Central deals, McCulloch moved onto The Tick, which was being produced by Sony Pictures Television for a live action series on Fox, after the comic book (and cartoon series) of the same name. McCulloch continued to work with The Venture Bros. and his agent helped him get in with a studio that was beginning to develop CG animated shows to develop his idea. Unfortunately, the studio soon decided against producing the series and The Venture Bros. fell back into development limbo. Upon the cancellation of The Tick, McCulloch revised his pilot script, made some redesigns, and refined the general look of the series. In New York City, McCulloch met Jeff Nodelman of Noodlesoup Productions, who assured him that the show could be done efficiently and inexpensively.

Later, McCulloch learned about Adult Swim, and contacted network executive Linda Simensky for a pitch meeting. The block, at the time, was looking for a third pilot to greenlight and The Venture Bros. came along at just the right time to fill that space. After months of negotiating, the show was ready to be produced in September 2002 at Noodlesoup using Flash animation and on a very low budget. For the show, McCulloch adopted the alias Jackson Publick for his production and writing credits (but not voice credits). Musical artist J.G. Thirlwell allowed the show to license some of his music, as he was too busy to score anything new. The pilot was completed and finally premiered on Adult Swim in February 2003. Fan and critical response was positive and led, months later, to the show being greenlit for series. The first season of The Venture Bros. premiered in late summer of 2004.

The show is the first traditionally animated half-hour series to be produced by Adult Swim, who mainly produced 15-minute economical animated shows using Flash or Adobe After Effects. The Venture Bros. is one of the lowest budget traditionally animated shows on the air. The Venture Bros. is produced by Astrobase Go! and World Leaders Entertainment in New York City and is animated by Digital eMation, Inc. in Seoul, Korea.